I'm feeling nostalgic today. I can't possibly think of a more beautiful day to revisit one of my childhood games... via a longplay. Rugrats Royal Ransom. The GameCube was my shit back in the day, and so was Nickelodeon, and naturally I wanted to find stuff that can appeal to both.
Royal Ransom was released in 2002, and was developed by Avalanche Software. Avalanche were behind the Tak and the Power of Juju games, the N64 version of Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub Zero, a whole bunch of licenses, don't ask if they're worth playing though. It came out for GameCube and PlayStation 2, and something tells me around this time Nickelodeon were trying to avoid the XBOX as much as possible, the most we got in 2002 was Nickelodeon Party Blast, a pity indeed.
The game wasn't particularly liked, but it wasn't to any extreme degree, at most X-Play in their usual wisdom underthought while going for a version of the game that I didn't own, and you'd think nobody knew about the GameCube back then, I mean until the Wii U it was the lowest selling Nintendo console so, got me there I guess.
Along with nostalgia, Royal Ransom is special for another reason. It was there that I got an introduction to SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman through a trailer that was included. By that point I already played Battle for Bikini Bottom and the movie game, and since it wouldn't be for another few years until I got another SpongeBob game for the console, I figured I'd give it a shot, and if you want my quick thoughts on it, I get why people don't like it, but a lot of the complaints people raise are arbitrary, to say the least, and I'd wonder how big of SpongeBob fans they are to miss blatant easter eggs.
Got that out of my system, back from one cash cow to another.
On the premise, Stu builds a giant play palace, Angelica takes over the castle up top and steals the babies' toys and they would travel up to try and get them back, their imagination making each level a journey. Not bad, especially given where the show was at this point, I can see this happening in an episode of the show, beyond Stu managing to pull off something with such a wide scope and nothing blew up or whatever.
The game lets you play as either Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil or Kimi, you don't make the selection at the start, you just have either five going right into it. Some had complained about this because each character is essentially the same, but I think I figured out why they made that choice. To explain, you need to pay a certain number of coins to get into the play palace. If you play a level and lose you get sent back out. Now, what would five different yet similar characters mean in this situation? If you manage to get all five babies onto the play palace, you have additional chances at the levels before you have to pay to get back on again, and since they play the same, once more, extra babies, extra chances. I'd do a mic drop, but I don't own one and that's cliched as hell.
There is some mild variety in each stage, but not that much. While the goals, methods and what not vary, each stage is either some variation of race, wandering from one place to another or finding items and bringing them to designated spots. I'll give it this, there's more to do here than in Fairly Odd Parents Breakin Da Rules, there's more to collect and while core principles of each level are similar, they're not exactly the same. The unique worlds you go to are realized well enough which help keep things different. For example, in the moon section you actually have looser gravity in your jumps.
There is also mild reward for exploration, as along with batteries you find money you can use to pay for extra items.
The goal of this game is to beat enough levels on three sections of the play palace before you get to confront Angelica, to get to the sections you need to collect big batteries which you get after beating said levels, to get to levels you need to collect little batteries you find in the sections or the levels themselves. You're not obligate to beat every single level in this game as long as you get enough big batteries, so that's a plus, as long as you have enough little batteries and you can't stand a certain level, you have the option to skip it, but just to be safe, keep your battery number in check.
Some had complained about the jumping in this game, and to that I have this to say. Either it's a problem with the PS2 version, or somebody's full of shit. The jumping has never been an issue for me, it never hindered me in any way. I know not every game is gonna have precise jumps, but come on, you can do way worse. I also heard some claim this game is buggy as hell, and yeah, there're times you can fall through the floor, but you have to really make the effort to break through. Some minor glitches don't even affect you.
Moving on, the game operates on a difficulty system, and the reason I came back to this was because I played it on easy, and only now saw what normal difficulty was like. I never saw what the hard mode offered, so I'm gonna be referring to normal and easy difficulties herein. The normal difficulty has a high number of items you need to get, items are further away from one another, there're more enemies on screen along with landmines in the form of jack in the boxes. But, as an interesting mechanic you can bounce off the top of them if you so choose.
On easy, there're some huge changes. Items are either closer together or levels are cut shorter, there're less enemies, the land mines are removed entirely, and that's just obvious ones. To single out two examples, I'll refer to the boss fight at the end of Cone Caper and the final level. The former has you fight a mechanical clown head that would fire projectiles at you, while the final level has you launch boulders at doors covered by gates you can only open by sitting on pressure pads. In easy mode, the clown doesn't attack you, and all you have to do is drive over the pressure pad once and the gate stays down. Another minor change, referring to Temple of the Lamp, in normal difficulty beetles are found nearly everywhere in the open, but in easy mode, the only way to find them is if you break the vases some are hiding in.
I can say with certainty that the difficulty changes are far from arbitrary, there are some serious contrasts between them.
The music is decent, and while Mark Mothersbaugh didn't compose it here, some tracks have the Rugrats charm, or they're just enjoyable to listen to. But there is a caveat, the music loops, and it happens quite soon.
Last thing I'd like to go over is the graphics. For a show that has a particular art direction, and for how it translates to video game graphics, it actually doesn't look too bad, of course it's not great, but you know what? It's already vastly superior to the 2021 Rugrats reboot, and I'd say that no matter what. There is some decent attention to detail in the backgrounds, whether you get to see cars driving on the road in the hub, or you get some decent views and scenery in the actual levels.
Final Thoughts
I can't say for certain that time treated this game well, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this game. Every level felt like a journey, and hey, that was the bottom line. The game has some weird elements, but either it fits with the show or helps craft a unique identity, which is something I'd give to Revenge of the Flying Dutchman all the same.
Sorry if this came off as a bit disjointed, I wanted to get something out there while the game was still fresh in my head.
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